Cats and kittens

In January 2005 we adopted this kitty. She about 3 years old and very shy when we first took her home. She hid for about four days until she finally decided that we were okay to live with. She was an absolutely loving cat. She disappeared on February 23, 2010. She went out in the garage and then got out on a rainy afternoon, never to be seen again. We don't know where she went or what happened to her. It has been very frustrating not to know as we loved this kitty so much.

Now it is August and six months have passed. Although we still miss our Puddis and wonder what ever happened to her, we have now adopted two new kittens. Meet Buzz and Ginger, our new friends.


This is Buzz. He is a friendly and fun little four month old kitten. We adopted hom from Sandy Cannon in Washington, Utah. He was a little shy at first but has quickly become at home here. He is very playful and likes to be right in the middle of everything. Hence the name Buzz as in "Buzz off". Just kidding. He is a cute and fun kitty.

This is Ginger. She is a calico. I have always wanted a calico. She is much more shy but is finally more friendly and loving instead of hiding and darting away when we come around. Last night she got on the couch with me and acted like she couldn't get enough petting and purring.

They have so much fun playing with each other. Brother and sister, they play and pretend fight and chase each other all around the house.

Mom's birthday

Many times I have seen memorials in the newspaper that a family member has written and had published. They are usually written on the anniversary of the loved one's death or on a special occasion, such as a birthday. I have never felt a desire to write such a memorial until today and I still have no desire to write it as if mom was the one that was going to read it, as some are wont to do.

Mom was born August 21, 1910. Today being August 21, 2010 would have been her 100th birthday and I do not want this day to pass without notice. She was my mother, friend, mentor, greatest advocate and she loved me unconditionally and I knew it from my earliest memories until the very day she died. I believe she is still all of those things to me, we just are separated for the time being and when the time comes, we will have a wonderful reunion.
I love her and miss her!

Our garden's welcome home

Wow! Look at what was waiting for me in the garden. Mmmmmm, how many can I eat at one sitting. Oops, better watch out for too much acid - hives, you know! I'll give some away, make some tomatoe juice and eat, eat, eat.

July 31, 2010 The way home and musings

We woke up at 6 a.m. in Warsaw and couldn't go back to sleep. We finally got up at 7:00, showered and went down to breakfast. We didn't have to have our luggage out until 8:30 and to the bus by 9:30. We were taken to the airport, got checked in and went through security and then had to wait until 11:35 to board our plane. We got on and were supposed to take off at 11:55, but someone didn't show and they had to find 4 pieces of luggage and then reschedule takeoff. We were about 50 minutes late leaving, but they were able to make up most of the time and we were only about 15 minutes late arriving at Heathrow. We had to get our boarding passes and go through security again before we could go to the gate. Then we had to wait for the gate to be listed. As it happened our gate was in another terminal so we had to take the tram and then walk a fair distance to the gate. We were checked through to get on the plane and I was informed that I had to be taken down for another security check of my carryon luggage. What luck! I guess my boarding pass just happened to be marked for a random check. They went through all my stuff and I was frisked (that was sure fun - not). The flight left on time (4:10 p.m.) and we followed the sun all the way to Las Vegas, arriving at about 6:45 p.m. We went through customs and waited for our luggage, caught a bus to the terminal where St. George Express was waiting and then had to wait there until everyone with reservations arrived. We left about 9:15 and got to Howard Johnson's in St George at 12:15. By the time we got our luggage off the van, found our car and drove home it was going on to 1:00 a.m. We figured that we had been up for 28 hours and boy did that bed look good! There is no place like HOME!



Some random observations:



Eastern Europe is beautiful, green, generally quite cool and wet.

It is a pain to have to scrounge up coins of whichever country you are in to go to the bathroom!

The food we had in all places we went was really good and it was fun to see the differences and similarities from one country to the next.

Everywhere we ate, the breads were delicious.

Lots of people smoke.

Drinking is part of their way of life. All restaurants always offered beer and wine. At one restaurant in Warsaw there was a group of people at a large table with two big cylinders of beer, each with a tap on it, right on the table.

Even though these countries are part of the European Union, some of them haven't converted to euros and so it was necessary to exchange some money into the local currency. This is a great pain as we had no idea exactly what we were spending. We found out when we got back and checked our credit card charges. We were told roughly how to convert, but it is hard to know exactly. The euro is easy to figure as 1 euro = $1.30, but who knows 50,000 Forint. Sheesh!

It is easy to get "ripped off", especially when you are having a hard time converting the money. We had lunch that was just 2 sandwiches, nothing fancy, and 2 bottles of water for what later we figured cost us $45. Ouch!

It is very admirable what these countries have done to rebuild their cities from the devastation brought on by both World War II and the following years of Soviet/Communist rule. When you see what socialism did to these countries for over 40 years, it is pretty scary. I think we need to be very watchful of what is happening right under our noses in America that is taking us down the slippery slope, especially under our current administration. Beware America! My sister-in-law and her family were living in Budapest, Hungary and they recognize and see all the signs of socialism and they know from first-hand experience what it is to live under that type of government. We must not let it happen here!

July 30, 2010 The last day of the tour

Our last city tour was of Warsaw, Poland. We started the tour walking through a beautiful park. Everything in this part of the world is so green and full of vegetation. Coming from a desert, it was amazing all throughout this trip to see so much green and so many rivers and a lot of rain. That, of course, is why it is so lush and beautiful.

Another plaza. These cities in Eastern Europe all have many of these where there is only walking, no vehicles at all and I thought they were great.

This is an area that has been completely rebuilt since WWII. The Nazi's blew up all of these buildings before the city was liberated by the Soviets and they have been built to look as they did before but you can tell that they are not "old" old buildings. Everywhere are these sidewalk cafes where you can stop to get something to eat. We had lunch at one after the tour was finished.

We also were taken to the area of Warsaw that was called the Ghetto where the Jews were confined before they were sent to the concentration camps. The first winter 100,000 died in the Ghetto from disease caused from the cold and unsanitary conditions. If you read Mila 18 by Leon Uris, this is the area he wrote about in that book.

July 29, 2010 A visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau

This was one of the most sobering experiences of my life. Over the years, I have heard and read in various ways about the concentration camps of the Nazi's in World War II, but none of that prepared me for actually experiencing being there where it all took place. These buildings were actually barracks that the Nazi's used at first until there were too many Jews, political prisoners and gypsies to keep here. Over 90% were Jews, but it was interesting to find out that there were others incarcerated here. There was only one gas chamber here and one crematorium to burn the bodies so a short distance they built Auschwitz II, which was named Birkenau. Much of it was destroyed when the Nazi's found out the Soviets were coming to liberate Poland, in fact 85% of Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazi's to hide their evil practices. Much of historic "old town" Warsaw was leveled by them. It has since been rebuilt, but you can tell the buildings are "restored" and not truly "old".

This is not a "grassy mound", but the gas chamber and chimney of the crematorium where the Jews were taken for their "shower", after having removed their clothing and having their hair shorn. They were taken into this cement room and the poison gas was dropped down through the ceiling. Some died quickly, some not! They were then cremated, however they could not burn them fast enough, given the number that had been killed each day, thus the Birkenau gas chambers and crematoriums and sheds to house the prisoners were built. The prisoners were used for the labor to build the new facilities.

These are the train tracks that brought the Jews to Birkenau. In the distance was the point where they were taken out of the cattle cars and separated according to the Nazi's judgement of whether or not they were "fit" to work. Women with children and older people were summarily sent to the gas chambers. The rest were sent to the barracks to be sent to work.

These are the bathroom facilities at Birkenau. No privacy, no dignity. They were brought here summer and winter with no clothes to wash and use the "facilities".

This was the "sleeping" facilities originally designed to hold about 50 horses, but about 1,000 prisoners would sleep on these pallets, usually about 12 people to each wooden pallet with little or nothing to sleep on or put over you. The cement down the center was supposedly a heating system. Whether cold or hot or wet, they had to try to survive.

A picture from the guard tower of the buildings that are left. You can see the entire area that has been destroyed. This picture was taken of the right side, the train unloading being in the center and more buildings on the left. The gas chambers and crematoriums were in the distance and could be identified by the chimneys.

There are about 4 million visitors to these memorials/museums at Auschwitz and Birkenau every year. There were many teary eyes and quiet sober faces as we walked around and heard and read the stories of what happened here. In the buildings at Auschwitz there were many rooms of memorabilia, but no pictures were allowed. They had suitcases with peoples names on them, thousands of pairs of glasses, toothbrushes, hair brushes, and to me, hardest to see was the hair that had been cut from their heads before they were taken to die. One of the members of our tour group was a woman from Canada whose mother survived Auschwitz. She even knew the building (#25) that her mother had been in and miraculously survived. It was a difficult experience, but one that I am glad that I had.